Winter Olympics star at centre of cheating row fires accusation back | Other | Sport

Marc Kennedy has claimed that Sweden are looking to “catch teams in the act” at this year’s Winter Olympics, after being repeatedly called out for cheating. The 44-year-old Canadian curler unleashed a foul-mouthed rant toward Oskar Eriksson on the ice on Friday, after the Swedish sensation accused him of touching his stone after it had passed the hog line.

In response, Kennedy gestured towards himself, wearing a shocked expression, before yelling: “I haven’t done it once. You can f*** off,” prompting Eriksson to reply: “I’ll show you a video after the game. I’ll show you a video where it’s two meters over the hog line.” Canada ultimately won that match 8-6.

The saga then intensified further on Saturday, when Switzerland also accused Kennedy of breaking the rules, with Pablo Lachat-Couchepin voicing his concerns with Glenn Howard after believing he had seen a double tap. After his team achieved a 9-5 win over Canada, Lachat-Couchepin said: “Well, everyone talked about it yesterday about the double, potential double touching, and I think, I assume I saw one when the referee was right next to me.

“We received an email, saying ‘OK, we’re going to monitor it,’ and it’s nothing personally against Canada, because for me personally, it does nothing; they can do whatever they want, it doesn’t change the direction of the stone. But when you have a referee on the ice and the referee is here, and he is looking at it, then he should see it.

“This is what I was a bit annoyed about. I said to the chief umpire, if they send an email they [Canada] just have to follow the rules and follow what is said. It’s nothing personal against Marc Kennedy, he’s a fantastic player, a very fair play guy and I really admire him.”

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Elsewhere on Saturday, World Curling explained that they had stepped in to caution Kennedy over his choice of words in particular following his clash with Eriksson. A notice from the regulatory board read: “Following the Friday evening session, World Curling spoke with the Canadian officials to issue a verbal warning regarding the language used by a Canadian men’s player during the game.

“During that meeting it was made clear to those officials that further inappropriate behaviour, determined by rule R.19, would result in additional sanctions. Rule R.19 states: ‘Improper conduct, foul or offensive language, equipment abuse, or wilful damage on the part of any team member is prohibited. Any violation may result in suspension of the offending person(s) by the curling organisation having jurisdiction.'”

Now, Kennedy has broken his silence on matters, with a scathing opinion that Sweden are deliberately trying to catch out opponents as they vie for gold in Milano Cortina. He said: “I’ll be honest with you guys, my whole life, when my integrity has been questioned, sometimes that’s the response I have.

“I can’t think of once in my entire career where I’ve done something to gain a competitive advantage by cheating. And I take that very seriously. And it’s been a really long career. So when you get called out, my instinct was to be a little bit of a bulldog.

“I don’t regret defending myself or my teammates in that moment. I just probably regret the language I used. They [Sweden] have come up with a plan here at the Olympics, as far as I know, to catch teams in the act.

“It was planned right from the word go yesterday, from the words that were being said by their coaches and the way they were running to the officials. It was kind of evident that something was going on, and they were trying to catch us in an act. I know we’re not the only team that they’ve done that to.”

All eyes will now be on Canada’s next preliminary clash with China on Sunday come 6.05pm.